I first listened to the third movement of this work after having played it for the first time in a chamber group. Initially I thought of it as just a pretty melody, something one could easily fall asleep too. But, I feel now that as I’ve grown, and gained more “pathos” (if you will), it’s such a bittersweet movement. I liken to waving a loved one goodbye, as if it would be the last time I would see them. All that remains is the wonderful feeling of having known that person, even if they are now gone.
The playing in this recording isn’t stellar, but the audio quality is decent. Overall it gets the job done in representing my referential description above. I personally have listened to The Emerson’s recording the most, but the Beaux Arts Trio has a nice recording as well. « Continue reading “Schumann Piano Quartet, Mvt. 3” »
I went to my good friend, Alana Bennett’s, Senior Recital yesterday. She ended her program with the entire Dvorák Dumky Trio. For one, the players who included Patti Kilroy (her blog link is on the upper left hand side of the page), played great. Here and there they had some ensemble issues, but over all I thought the music was played with technical facility and thoughtfulness. The thoughtfulness probably comes from the direction and coaching of Marion Feldman. The connection between Patti and Alana was clear which made the pianist Eun Jung Bae seem the odd-man lady out. This should be expected as the string players had been performing together for three years at this point.
Aside from the performance aspect, I would like to comment on Dvorák’s compositions. Dvorák writes really cool sections of music, at least in the Dumky, but when placed in the whole of the work, each section comes across as cheesey (I’m going to be slaughtered by an angry mob of Czechs tomorrow).
Listen to the first movement to about 2:30. This is rediculous. I am not saying it’s an affront, and the humor in it is clear. But it sounds like a cheap gag:
This kind of sillyness is repeated in nearly every movement. In the last movement, where the music isn’t particularly conducive to contrasting humor like the first, I laughed for most of it. This because the difference in mood is so great, from the sublime to an intense anger of some sort. Below the fold are the rest of the videos of Beaux Arts Trio playing all the other movements.
Regardless of your standing on the effects and benefits of the No Child Left Behind Act (Public Law 107-110), the most recent large scale education reform, the NCLB has had a profound negative effect on music and the arts in general in public schools. Robert Lynch provided statistics in The Hill when the act was coming back up for re authorization in 2007:
A recent national study of the Act’s impact by the Council on Education Policy reveals that a majority of school leaders saw gains in achievement, but 71 percent reported having reduced instructional time in at least one other subject to make more time for reading and math. Since the passage of NCLB, 22 percent of elementary school leaders surveyed reported a decline in their art and music instruction.
This is fairly significant. My introduction to the viola was through the local public school system in Cleveland. An education surely should provide for the basic skills necessary for children to grow into functioning members of society (high school level math and reading levels), but it should also be far more. Any education should provide a broad pallet of topics so students can explore their interests and develop their dreams.
When I was attending the music academy/festival California Summer Music, the quartet I was placed in was asked to play an outreach for the local music program. The students at the public school there were largely the sons and daughters of migrant workers in northern-California’s garlic fields. After the program, we were taken out to lunch by one of the members of the school’s PTA and she related a chilling story about how the NCLB act had wrecked the music program at the school.
In general, to meet the proficiency-standards in math and reading set by the state, music programs all over the country are moved off of school hours to accommodate more class time for these two topics (the only subjects taken under consideration in the NCLB’s standardized testing). The problem that this particular school had, was that moving the music program directly after school conflicted with athletics. This led it to be put further after athletics, giving the students and staff time to eat dinner. Since the music program was so late after school ended, none of the district’s buses were available to take students home with out paying time and a half, which considering the budgets of most local districts, wouldn’t fly with the board.
With this change, the music program instantly lost half of its students. This, for the reasons I expressed above, is tragic. Not only are we thinning our artistic talent pool, and subsequently our ability to export culture and ideas, but we are removing an enriching experience from our children’s lives, regardless of their intent on whether to become a professional artist. « Continue reading “The No Child Left Behind Act and Arts Programs” »
Yesterday’s arts section in the New York Times had a nice reflection on Lincoln Center by Anthony Tommasini. In it he talks about criticism leveled at the performing arts center and then spends time reflecting on -and largely rejecting- these criticisms. I’ll take a look at some of his conclusions and add some of my own.
Nothing can be more energizing to the cultural life of a city than dynamic performing arts institutions. But the danger in grouping them together is that the creative identities of individual institutions — a bold modern dance company, a great symphony orchestra — can blur behind the walls of an officious encampment. The promise of arts organizations working in sync can become a daily grind of competing boards and directors stifled by bureaucracy.
These are the fair complaints that have been leveled at Lincoln Center and at cultural complexes that followed in other cities. Still, there is potential for synergy between performing arts institutions that share a common campus and a board of overseers. Lincoln Center was conceived with that vision. And today that spirit can best be felt each summer with the Lincoln Center Festival, when member institutions devise innovative, collaborative projects and presentations.
Lincoln center, and the organizations that inhabit it do put on interesting performances now and again. Most of the great living contemporary composers get play time in the center, but I would hardly, ever, call what Lincoln Center does “innovative”. Moving on, Mr. Tommasini talks about the NY City Opera:
But the struggling New York City Opera has been an unhappy fit at Lincoln Center since it moved to the New York State Theater (now renovated and renamed the David H. Koch Theater) in 1966. Its previous home, New York City Center, was far from a proper opera house, but the company had a feisty character there. At Lincoln Center, City Opera has long been the junior partner in a skewed arrangement with New York City Ballet. Being literally in the shadow of the Met has made it harder for City Opera to show the public that it is not a lesser Met but an alternative company with a different mission and inventive ethos.
Being in the shadow of The Met is a good perception by Mr. Tommanasini. This is because everything in Lincoln Center is in The Met’s shadow, whether it be quality of performance or facilities. One thing that Mr. Tommasini overlooks is the terrible acoustics of the stage. The New York City Opera has trouble putting on stunning performances (and then developing an enthusiastic concert-going base or favorable reviews) because the stage is dead. This shouldn’t be surprising though, as it was built for the Ballet whom the NYC Opera shares the Koch Theater with. When originally built, the acoustical goal was to muffle the sound of the dancer’s feet:
To her surprise, Sills says, she learned that ”a lot of the constituents were unhappy,” and perhaps none more so than City Opera, which felt that it was trapped in an acoustical prison. The State Theater had been built for dance, and the stage that muffled the sounds of dancers’ feet so effectively also muffled the sounds of singers’ voices, or so officials with City Opera contended. They wanted their own opera house on the Lincoln Center campus, which meant a new building in Damrosch Park, a corner of green snug against one flank of the Metropolitan Opera.
This is a glaring issue for the lead roles when singing, as when the tenor attempts a forte in the high range of his voice, all he gets is a whimper in the house. Listening to an opera on that stage is much like sitting in the nosebleeds of Avery Fisher, an experience that forces listeners home to their recordings. This is most likely why the NYC Opera has now resorted to sound-reinforcement. On to the NY Phil, and it’s similar problems:
The inadequacy of Avery Fisher Hall’s current acoustics is greatly exaggerated. On a good night, when the Philharmonic is inspired, the sound has richness, clarity and presence. Did anyone in the audience think about acoustics in January when Gustavo Dudamel conducted the orchestra in an electrifying performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony?
A bigger problem, reflecting the downside of being one of many Lincoln Center constituents, is the way the Philharmonic’s tenant status is affecting the renovation of Avery Fisher. Plans are stuck in place because the orchestra and the center have been unable to agree on the nature and extent of the project.
I am in total disagreement with Mr. Tommasini here. Avery Fisher might be the most boring place to listen to music, especially if you are in the balconies. I believe his perception about how the acoustics really sound up there with the common folk is likely skewed, since he is given tickets by the NY Phil in the prime orchestra seating. This is the only section of the house where anything sounds decent. Everything at the top of the house sounds like the distant fiddling of Muzak, as all the richness and clarity that he says the orchestra can get, bleeds into dry banality. This is not so in the Met, nor Carnegie hall.
Moving forward, he quotes the vice-president of Lincoln Center (who naturally boosts for the institution).
“Having these arts organizations together, with this über identity, has absolutely brought in new audiences,” she added, calling it an “extraordinarily democratic approach to the arts.”
But it could also be argued that the complex’s citadel-like feeling has deterred potential audiences. With its institutional appearance, Lincoln Center does not look at first glance like a place for innovative or experimental work.
And yet, thanks in part to Ms. Moss, the center has been a hotbed of unusual programming and creative educational projects for the last 15 years. It is significant, though, that some of the most daring recent presentations have occurred off campus, like last summer’s multimedia production of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s visionary, complex modernist opera “Die Soldaten,” which the Lincoln Center Festival presented in the Park Avenue Armory.
First, Lincoln Center as an idea and operation is not a democratic approach to the arts. It’s fairly clear from the programming of new works (even works written after 1950) and the tepid response from audiences that it is musical curators deeming what is significant art rather than people voting (which they do with their hands after a performance).
Second, citing an example of “innovation” with a “modernist” opera is an oxymoron. Modernism died nearly 60 years ago, it should be considered old music like romanticism. To move forward in music, we need to escape the idea that the shocking, depressed or gruesome is new and edgy.
Though it seems I am a Lincoln Center hater, I think The Met is incredible. Additionally, the re-opening of Alice-Tully, and Tommasini says this too, is incredibly promising, as chamber and small ensemble works are usually the most progressive. On top of that, having large institutions that can foot the big bills for great works is a tremendous asset for the arts community, but I would never suggest that they are on the vanguard of musical progression.
This is one of the very first serious viola concertos after a long drought between the writing of this work and the Stamitz and Hoffmeister concertos. The problem with this work is that the Solo Viola doesn’t play for most the end of the piece, making it a terrible work to play on a recital as the Violist would just be standing around smiling while the pianist finishes up the work. This said, it makes far more sense to play this work with an orchestra. Franz Liszt made the first piano reduction and that copy is beneath the fold. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the work:
Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) encouraged Berlioz (1803-1869) to write Harold en Italie. The two first met after a concert of Berlioz’s works conducted by Narcisse Girard on 22 December 1833, three years after the premiere of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Paganini had acquired a superb viola, a Stradivarius — “But I have no suitable music. Would you like to write a solo for viola? You are the only one I can trust for this task.”
Berlioz began “by writing a solo for viola, but one which involved the orchestra in such a way as not to reduce the effectiveness of the orchestral contribution.” When Paganini saw the sketch of the allegro movement, with all the rests in the viola part, he told Berlioz it would not do, and that he expected to be playing continuously.[1]. They then parted, with Paganini disappointed.
Harold en Italie is a four-movement work, relaxed and poetic. It features an innovative, extensive part for solo viola — a dusky, evocative instrument which is often consigned a secondary role in orchestral texture. In another departure, the viola has the dramatic role of a melancholy personality.
Lord Byron‘s poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage inspired the mood of Harold. The poem is a fragment of an epic with a quintessentially Romantic hero. Berlioz wrote, “My intention was to write a series of orchestral scenes, in which the solo viola would be involved as a more or less active participant while retaining its own character. By placing it among the poetic memories formed from my wanderings in the Abruzzi, I wanted to make the viola a kind of melancholy dreamer in the manner of Byron’s Childe-Harold.” That he had recycled some of the material from his discarded concert overture, Rob-Roy went unmentioned.
The first movement (“Harold aux montagnes”) refers to the scenes that Harold, the melancholic character, encounters in mountains. In the second movement (“Marche des pélerins”), Harold accompanies a group of pilgrims.
The third movement (“Sérénade”) involves a love scene; someone plays a serenade for his mistress. In the fourth movement, (“Orgie de brigands”), spiritually tired and depressed, Harold seeks comfort among wild and dangerous company, perhaps in a tavern. Jacques Barzun reminds us that “The brigand of Berlioz’s time is the avenger of social injustice, the rebel against the City, who resorts to nature for healing the wounds of social man.”[2]
Throughout the symphony, the viola represents Harold’s character. The manner in which the viola theme hesitantly repeats its opening phrase — gaining confidence, like an idea forming, before the long melody spills out in its entirety — was satirized in a musical paper after the premiere. It began “Ha! ha! ha! – haro! haro! Harold!”— a cheeky touch that Berlioz recalled years later in his Memoirs.
Harold in Italy premiered on 23 November 1834 with the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, Chrétien Urhan playing the viola part, Narcisse Girard conducting. Even though the second movement “March of the Pilgrims” received an encore, this performance contributed to Berlioz’s decision to conduct his own music in the future.
Paganini did not hear the work he had commissioned until 16 December 1838; then he was so overwhelmed by it that, following the performance, he dragged Berlioz onto the stage and there knelt and kissed his hand before a wildly cheering audience and applauding musicians. A few days later he sent Berlioz a letter of congratulations, enclosing a bank draft for 20,000 francs.
It’s recital season and I have been going to a few in between stints of practicing for my own. At the end of last month, I played in a chamber concert hosted by Noam Faingold, where I played the Prokofiev Quintet. On the end of that concert was a group playing Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. I had the pleasure of being able to see them play again at one of the member’s recitals.
To say the least, movement’s five and eight are absolutely stunning. I had heard the work performed live only once before by members and colleagues of the Bergonzi String Quartet, and being at a young age with (admittedly) less refined tastes, I don’t remember appreciating the entire work as much. Now, with these new eyes, I see the entire work as profound, and in the right setting (cheerily lit rooms don’t exactly match the aesthetic of the music) it can floor listeners.
Messiaen said of the last movement that it should be just like “pure love,” but if I may engage in a bit of the intentional fallacy here, the fifth movement is more like “pure love”. I’ll go out on a limb and also say that I think love is the wrong word to use, the emotional color that Messiaen presents us is indescribable. The reason I like the fifth movement more is because of the tone color of the cello. The cello’s voice has more core and depth, yet can still get high enough to express stratospheric, heavenly floating (call me a lower voice lover, because I am).
It’s so placid and contemplative.
The players handled it wonderfully in both concerts, though I thought the first performance was more inspired, even if less prepared.
Electronic music was first used by avant-garde composers in the early part of the 20th century, most notably Varese. These guys would record and transplant the sounds they choose to create their “organized sound” such as in Poême Électronique:
As time went on and the abilities to create different sounds and explore timbre grew, electronic art music still remained on the fringe as far as importance in influence goes. Serialists, minimalists and now world music composers all have enjoyed a period of cultural dominance while electronic compositions only rarely are projected into our collective consciousness (I would consider Poême Électronique one such work, but this may be because of it’s placement in a world’s fair where a large number of people would interact with it). There are a few reasons that this may be:
There are fewer electronic composers than traditional instrumental composers, limiting the talent pool and number of works created. The fact of the small composer pool is likely do to the technical expertise required to compose electronic works.
There is a particular style to composing electronic music that was helped defined by The Futurists and other composers like Varese who emphasized “organized sound”. These composers were essentially the first samplers but the organization of the samples is what is likely to turn off casual listeners.
When listeners get turned off, there is no economic incentive, even for adventurous non-profits to put on a work, because it kills their listening base and offends the ears of the principal donors.
The art music in the classical tradition created electronically either seems silly or just downright boring. On the other hand, lots of interesting things have been done with electronic music in rock/pop music. Bands like Radiohead or Sigur Rós have really gone a long ways in creating an alternative, ethereal electronic sound which is in direct contrast to disjointed, grotesque sound of classical electronic composers.
I’ve been switching back and forth on the precept that we (as a classical music establishment) should be more relaxed about our concert setting. On one hand it is justified that we should be respectful to our fellow listeners who may have different tastes from us, or that some hooligan may just be making noise to cause trouble. Nonetheless, I find myself irrepressibly bored at some classical concerts now a days, not because the performers are terrible (only the good lord knows how much performers put on the line for their audiences) but because the music is absolutely atrocious. There is so much philosophically right about writing music like this, but there is far more aesthetically wrong. Once every work is as garrulous as Stockhausen or Babbitt, then the differences between pieces that were interesting and new when compared to romanticism bleed away into the universality of ugliness.
Ultimately, this listener is driven to want the experience to end, and the means to do that is to boo the work of art off the stage. Call me a neanderthal, but I believe that if every composer has the right to offend my ears for 20 minutes or more, then I should have the right to voice my displeasure without the consequences of breaking a social construct by booing.
Who wouldn’t want to start booing after 2 hours of this?
Aside from their totally awesome rendition of purple haze or the incredible recording of Golijov’s Tenebrae on Oceana this has to be my favorite recording the Kronos Quartet has put out:
Roger Ridley's base track for Ben E. King's Stand By Me was played over by musicians all over the world
I’ve come across Playing for Change’s videos a few times in different sessions of stream-of-consciousness-type web-browsing. Aside from admiring the rawness and talent of the musicians who played and the wonderful recording done by the guys who produced the video, I thought that this was a brilliant idea. To me, music as a form of communication is essentially unsurpassed in its ability to cross languages and cultures (though some cultural differences, especially in taste, do exist). Music, as Susan Langer says is a non-discursive language representing virtual feeling. Since there is no need for translation of rhythm, pitch or tamber, and humans, as emotional beings, feel, there is certain universality to this sound-in-time we call music.
In the late 90s World music exploded onto the classical music scene in part, it is my belief, because new works in the traditional European art music style were unable to stir audiences to be passionate about classical music (see declining attendance of concerts & aging listener base). What occurred was the rise of great modern composers like Osvoldo Golijov who wrote music that reflected on their culture and other composers like Philip Glass who wrote world music based on a philosophical premise. This is different from composers in the past like Bela Bartok, or Kodaly who took folk themes from their native culture but focused more on transposing them into their modern(ist) aesthetic.
The problem I find with this new world music (aside from the fact that there are a bunch of gringos jumping on the bandwagon and replicating stereotyped effects) is that by transplanting other culture’s music into the formal classical setting it is really just the same exportation or importation of an ontological world without any real unification of a common human element.
Playing for Change does have the musicians from all over the world play western pop music, but the fusion of musicians with what probably amounts to scant training in western (it can be argued that western music has been exported around the world so much that everyone ends up trained in it though) is what I feel world music creation should be about. Clearly every musician recorded on that track understands the feeling that Ben E. King intended to evoke in Stand By Me, otherwise they would have failed to create such an awe-inspiring performance. This collaboration between different musicians seems to be more inline with the one of the fundamental ideas behind world music, where we demonstrate that music is a language that needs no translation.
